


wanna move like you move

by orphan_account



Category: Mob City
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, M/M, Racial slurs, idek man, if you get offended by that kind of thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-21 05:52:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1540028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Movers and shakers," Ned used to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wanna move like you move

**Author's Note:**

> not entirely happy with this, but I posted it on tumblr a while back and thought I should put it up over here. Also, hi, i'm now awash in a flood of mob city feels and everything is idiot mobsters crying about their boyfriends.

“Movers and shakers,” Ned used to say, with fighter planes screaming overhead and the ricochet of bullets all around them, “there are movers and there are shakers. Which do you wanna be, gunny?” He’d give one of those daredevil grins, and the next second he’d be gone, halfway across the airstrip with a crazy plan to push the Japs back again.

 

And damn him, but Joe was always right behind him, ready to deal out justice in bullets or fists or whatever he needed to keep Ned safe. Not that Ned ever made that very easy, the bastard.

 

Ned was always a mover, to his own mind, fast talking and quick to turn things to his advantage. But cautious, too--the war taught him to check for landmines before every step, to be wary of enemies sneaking around in the dark, to avoid anything that made too much noise or drew the wrong kind of attention. He was a gambler, yes, but Ned never risked his own life or anyone else’s without being at least reasonably sure of the outcome.

 

Joe was the shaker, Ned said, waiting for someone else to give him direction, waiting for orders and sticking to the letter of them. (“I don’t think that phrase means what you think it means,” Joe had argued, only to get an eyeroll and a twenty minute lecture on the appropriation and mutability of language.) Ned was the one who found loopholes, sharp mind and sharper tongue always working to get them in and out of trouble. Joe, Ned would say, would still be back at Henderson Field if it wasn’t for him, still be waiting for the Japs to lay down their arms and surrender because it was the ‘only thing left to do.’

 

Back home, being a shaker has a different meaning, Joe thinks. He’s gone rogue, shaking the world views of cops and criminals alike, ground trembling wherever he steps. He obeys no law but his own now, still barreling along after Ned and Ned’s crazy plan like there isn’t anything else in the universe.

 

It’s not a bad way to live a life, truthfully. Not what he would have chosen for himself, sending his formerly spotless record down the drain without a second thought when he put a handful of slugs in Hecky’s back, but then Joe’s always been good at following Ned’s lead and facing the consequences later.

 

They meet on street corners now, in parked cars and dirty alleys and dingy back rooms. No more dimly-lit bars where everyone knows their names and what they like to drink, not for the aspiring mob boss and his enforcer. Too many idle eyes, Ned says, too many loose tongues who might spill valuable information without even knowing it. Joe thinks he just likes the drama of it all, smoke trails twining together and hat brims tucked low, them against the world.

 

“God, Mickey’s so easy,” Ned says, a month after Joe accidentally sets things in motion, “I don’t know why we didn’t do this ages ago, Ben was never this open to my suggestions.”

 

Joe rolls his eyes. “Ben had Sid Rothman,” he points out dryly, inhaling nicotine and car fumes. “And you were a mouthy little shit who appeared only on the good word of Meyer Lansky, what’d you expect?”

 

“A little god damn respect, that’s what,” Ned snarls around his cigarette.

 

“You have to earn respect, especially in the mob.” Joe shoves his hands deeper in his pockets, scans the street around them. Two cars parked down outside the Clover Club--neither have moved in hours, but Joe saw the drivers get out so he’s not worried. The convertible in front of the barber shop in the opposite direction, on the other hand, well. “And to get anywhere with Ben, you had to earn Rothman’s respect.”

 

Ned scowls at him, brow furrowed under his hat. “Sid doesn’t like anybody. And I didn’t bust my ass all the way through law school just to get tossed aside by a jumped up hitman cause he was jealous of the way Siegel looked at me. Movers and shakers, remember?”

 

“Is that your excuse for everything?” Joe asks, instead of addressing the larger issue at hand here. Lord knows Ned brings it up often enough, there’ll be plenty of chances to soothe his hurt pride later.

 

“Not an excuse,” Ned mutters bitterly. He opens his mouth to say more, but the convertible Joe’s been eyeing chooses that moment to turn over it’s engine and start crawling down the street. Just like that, the moment’s broken. They’re not an enterprising mob boss and his enforcer anymore, just two guys, sharing an alley and a smoke in companionable silence.

 

It should be surprising to Joe, dogging along after Ned on a two-man campaign to straighten out the hole left by Siegel’s death. It should be, but it isn’t, and he can’t decide which is more alarming: the fact that he’s chasing a crazy idea and a daredevil grin, or that they’re winning. And they are winning, Ned worming his way into the good graces of Mickey Cohen’s contacts, Joe taking out anyone who might pose a threat, both of them on the lookout for any sign of Sid Rothman surfacing to enact his revenge.

 

When the floor falls in beneath them, Joe finds himself sitting at a familiar steel table, staring at familiar walls and a two way mirror. The only change is that he’s sitting on the opposite side, hands cuffed to the table, the rest of the team glaring. “Why did you do it?” Parker asks him, when it’s all said and done and the past has come to light.

 

Joe thinks back to that airfield, to guns and knives and a daredevil grin, and gives Parker a razor sharp smile of his own. “There are movers and shakers in the world,” he says. “I finally figured out which one I wanted to be.”

 

 


End file.
